E-C Translation Of Business Contract From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

With the globalization of economy and the increasing frequency of international business, the translation of business contracts has more and more important status. This thesis is on E-C international business contract translation under the guidance of Nida’s Functional Equivalence theory.Previously, there have been a lot of studies on business contract translation from various perspectives, such as from the perspective of stylistics, from the theory of register, and so on. However, most previous studies do not attach enough importance to the theoretical directing. Many of them just focus on the lexical or syntactic features of contracts. In light of this situation, the author tries to introduce the translation theory of Functional Equivalence to guide business contract translation. Nida’s Functional Equivalence shifts its focus from the relationship between the TT and ST to that between TT and readers and sets the standard of translation according to readers’response. Though there has been such study before, it was not systematically or clearly presented. So the author will renew the study in a much clearer and more scientific way.Firstly, the author does a review about some well-known equivalence theories, and after comparative analysis it is preliminarily concluded that Nida’s Functional Equivalence has the applicability to guide contract translation. Then the author makes a detailed analysis of contracts, so that the stylistic features of contracts will be better known. Then the author probes into business contract translation from the perspective of Functional Equivalence on three different levels--lexical level, syntactic level and textual level. And quite a number of examples will be given to show how to achieve equivalence on these levels. After that, it will be concluded that Functional Equivalence theory is quite useful and suitable for directing contract translation. Furthermore, under the guidance of Functional Equivalence theory, the author puts forward some techniques for business contract translation, such as conversion, division, combination, etc. and she also gives some suggestions for translators:to be bicultural, bilingual, intuitive and learn the professional knowledge related.